The government dropped a gigantic dataset: details on nearly every single procedure performed by a U.S. doctor on a Medicare patient.
The release was greeted with some serious gnashing of teeth, at least as far as doctors were concerned. The American Medical Association, which has always been staunchly opposed to the release of this sort of data, made sure it's objection was -- again -- on the record. MedPage Today leads ...

I am all for transparency when it comes to health care. So when Medicare announced that it would tell the public how much doctors are paid to treat Medicare patients, my first thought was "hooray." Another victory for consumer information.
Then I began to think about this in more depth. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), in response to a ruling in a federal case in Florida ...

If you live in the rural U.S., you probably face relatively limited access to the wonders of American health care. There won’t be as many physicians per capita offering you their services. This paucity of health care professionals will be especially stark for subspecialty care. There are not many ENT specialists opening up shops in rural Texas when they can find jobs in Houston or San Antonio.
This undersupply of physicians ...

What would you think if I told you that Medicare will require laboratories to disclose to CMS payment rates from private insurers? Or that they will identify physicians who order a high volume of CT tests and require them to pre-authorize those tests in 2020? How about that CMS will begin its own analysis of the time and cost of providing services in order to determine RVUs, a job currently ...

My home hospital is small. In a town of just over 20,000 people, this hospital has 25 beds and is designated "critical access" by Medicare because it is felt to be necessary to the health care of the community. Critical access is a designation which was introduced in 1997 when modernization of Medicare payment systems threatened to close a large proportion of hospitals in small communities which were unable to ...

A guest column by the American Medical Association, exclusive to KevinMD.com.
It’s crunch time for our nation’s physicians. After an 11-year battle, we stand closer now than ever before to repealing Medicare’s fatally-flawed sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula.
With the introduction of the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014 last month, Congress took a critical step toward reforming ...

Medicare’s Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) payment formula has hung like an annual albatross around the necks of physicians, Congress, and medical associations for more than a decade. Finally, we have a realistic opportunity to fling that albatross into the sea.
Three congressional committees -- from both the House and the Senate, with both Democratic and Republican support -- have crafted the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act of 2014, ...

In describing why Cooper Union, a unique college that offers absolutely free education to students, would effectively die if it starts charging tuition, Kevin Slavin wrote:

For many of us, Cooper wasn't even the cheapest way to go to school...So the question is: why did we go? We went not because of the financial value of free--that is, zero tuition--but rather, because of the academic value of free. At Cooper Union ...

A primary criticism of the Affordable Care Act is that it creates incentives for employers to hire fewer full-time employees. One of the House’s attempts to repeal the ACA even referenced it as the “job-killing healthcare law.” It’s true that there are some provisions in the ACA that employers may exploit in order to minimize the cost of doing business.
At the same time, it’s also true that the ...

Two decades ago, a decision was made by Medicare policymakers that carotid endarterectomies would not be allowed. Their claim was too many were being done costing Medicare money. The following year, data revealed a sharp rise in debilitating strokes, so wisely, surgical criteria was developed recommencing the use of this quality-of-life saving operation.
For years, there have been other misjudgments against Medicare patients that are only now becoming apparent. Let me clarify ...